The Penny Arcade Thread

Hah.

I'm not about to forgive the shitty art, but it definitely explains the weird expressions on Jim's face in the second strip. I almost think that it's kind of clever!

Heh, I do kind of like the punchline in the last panel, though.

I don't mind Jim's head in that one because Jim seems like he's a pretty special dude.

Actually, I think most of the art in that series was pretty good. The only stuff that was a bit off was her neck, and Jim's head in that one panel.

And your right about the expression thing. Looking at it again, his expressions match hers. It makes sense once you know that she is his puppet.

Well I'll be...

Well, that was stupid. Thanks for reminding me why I stopped reading PA and PvP, guys!

The facial expression thing was pretty clever, though.

It's always 100% great when PA decides to tackle gender issues, right?

"There's no gate and you're not the gatekeeper" is pretty spot on, though.

They actually did well on a gender issue, kind of surprising.

I don't think one of us is getting their joke, then.

It may be me. It's possible that after watching them flub every possible situation like this in the past I just assumed the worst. But when the girlfriend turns out to clearly be fake and in fact be a literal straw(wo)man, it seems to me that they're taking a shot at the people on the side of the recent 'this girl isn't a real geek' kerfuffle who were saying that it's ridiculous to judge someone as not being a 'real geek' just because they're an attractive girl.

Considering how over the top Tycho is being and the ultimate reveal on Cheeto's girlfriend, I figured that the ultimate message was that Tycho is wrong and he represents how wrong it is to 'white knight' geek girls. Or whatever.

Heh, okay, I can see that now that you point it out. But I thought the speech in the middle panel was pretty good, and chalked up the last panel to needing to get a laugh out of the comic somewhere.

I honestly did not even think it through that much to get the second strawman joke. I have to wonder if they meant it that way or not.

That is exactly the message I took from it.

You see the length of your post? That's why its interpretation of a PA comic cannot be right.

It'll be interesting to see the daily screed that goes with the comic, it will probably reveal more.

Yeah, after a fairly serious middle panel (drink some bad poison and shit out your life could be kind of funny, and is a typical PA "joke"), I thought they just decided to go goofy for the last one.

Recent PA on gender issues:



No, they are not good at dealing with gender issues.

I actually snickered at that one because I had just seen the video that they were directly parodying there. It was a "How not to get labeled a convention creeper" guide that had stupendously obvious advice that no normal person should need (e.g., "Don't follow a cosplayer around and say 'I'm so glad we met. Fate has brought us together. I feel like we should be together forever!'" or somesuch) . The video was unintentionally hilarious because of it. "Don't stick your finger up their butthole" is not THAT far off from what the video was laying out as very serious and much needed advice.

Heck, see for yourself:

Here you go. This is it. This is the entire amount that has anything to do with the comic. The rest is yelling about Devil May Cry.

"Sometimes, typically to provide rhetorical fuel, our opinions are conflated with some larger “gamer culture” bugaboo. The reality is that we have no idea what is going on in “gamer culture,” it’s getting progressively less coherent, I can’t make sense of it at all and I have officially stopped trying."

That's it.

Yeah...I guess at least he doesn't stick his foot in his mouth?

Okay, that makes more sense now. Actually though, I think that video isn't exactly silly. It seems to be made by a bunch of cosplay girls (as evidenced by the lack of a male nerd playing the male nerd), so it's probably something they felt needed to be explained to idiot nerds who go to cons.

I mean, I still have to make the "shower every day" speech to my nerds every spring.

Sadly, that video's "obvious" advice is often very necessary.

It's like I'm watching some kind of nature documentary.

A lot of talent and effort obviously went into that video and It's very well done, technically. But for me that just makes it all the funnier given the juxtaposition of that polish and the characters behaving like they'd be more appropriate in a SNL skit. And maybe I'm wrong, but I have a hard time believing that guys going up to women at a con and saying that stupid, corny stuff --at least so much so that it's a problem that needs a public service announcement. Oggling, copping a feel during a photo op, sure. But not the kind of cornball stuff in that video. The most cynical part of me thinks that the video was at best done just to be funny, and at worst as as an effort to get something promotional to go viral.

But then again, what do I know? Probably less than the women who made the video. Maybe guys say that stuff not in a serious way, but in a flat out harassing way (which I totally would believe). But that didn't seem to be the tone of the video.

It's like the stuff that was covered recently in Angie Gallant's skeptic feminism thread. Apparently a lot of geek guys seem to believe that if females show up to what they assume is meant to be a male-only event, it's because they're making themselves sexually available. Not too surprisingly these same guys figure that if the girl shows any skin it has to be because they're looking for that special guy to fuck them.

That's pretty depressing to hear. I have two daughters, and one of them is cultivating (admittedly with some help from dad) what could probably fairly be called geeky interests --video games, fantasy novels, science, comics, Legos, Pokemon, etc. I'd rather she (or anyone, for that matter) have to run anywhere near that crowd. Maybe I can pressure her into joining a gang, instead.

A sexy, leather wearing gang?

On the positive side of things, it's entirely possible to lead a fulfilling life without going to nerd cons.

I meant when she was older.

Over 21 is a little late to join a gang.

The culture being what it is currently, I recommend all the ones over 21 go in packs too. That's generally the advice anyone gives a woman of any age going to a con.

I've made friends with a couple of cosplayers. People approaching them blur fiction with reality in insanely creepy ways way more often than you'd hope.

Even if you're not cosplaying. simply being a woman at a con seems to be all the justification socially maladjusted fuckwits need to put their hands on you, grab you, throw you around, or worse, as if your presence was guaranteed consent. It's really fucking skeevy. For those who can't imagine what it's like, read this testimony - http://borderhouseblog.com/?p=9934

Read it and see if you can avoid either shaking with rage or crying by the time you're done. I couldn't.

Linked from quatoria's article is this bit of fucking insanity, featuring a dipshit who likes to harass females playing games on TwitchTV because they're 'attention whores', as if being a female who dares to allow people to see you makes you an attention whore.

It's pretty disheartening. How the fuck does this get fixed? I keep hoping that maybe our political climate will change when all these ancient-ass white in charge of the world just die already, but these young shitbirds are the ones replacing the old shitbirds and fuck will nothing ever stop being awful?

Today's is not funny, but true. I've seen the kind of sentiment in the first panel ON THESE VERY BOARDS!!1!

Eh, the big difference for me has always been that watching football is passive, I don't enjoy watching videogames either. I used to play the heck outta Tecmo Bowl and the early Maddens though.


(I also hate the culture of football, the wasted money by colleges, the drug use, long term damage from head injuries, the rape cover ups, etc, but that's all for a more political thread)

Exactly. I am just as unlikely to watch master Starcraft players compete. I like playing games, not watching others play no matter how good the players are.
That said, sport does nothing for me, but I don't care what others do. It just means that there's conversations where I tune out or leave and on this forum, I just put a whole subforum on permanently ignore.

You are empirically wrong, sir. Today's strip is funny.